A small group of the wealthiest Americans supplied a remarkable share of the money that shaped the 2024 United States federal elections. According to a New York Times analysis, just 300 billionaires and their immediate families contributed roughly $3 billion during the election cycle, accounting for nearly one-fifth of the almost $16 billion spent to elect candidates across the country.
The level of influence represented by that spending highlights the extraordinary role wealthy donors now play in the political system. Millions of Americans contribute to campaigns each election cycle, yet the data shows that a very small group of ultra-wealthy donors provides a significant portion of total political funding.
More than 3.46 million people donated over $200 to candidates during the 2024 election cycle. Billionaires and their families represented only about 0.0087 percent of those donors. Despite that tiny share, their contributions made up about 19 percent of all election spending.
The scale of individual billionaire donations further illustrates the imbalance. According to the analysis, the average billionaire donor gave about $10 million. That amount is roughly equivalent to the combined contributions of around 100,000 typical donors.
The effect of this spending was visible in several key races across the country. One of the most prominent examples occurred in Montana, where Republican Tim Sheehy defeated Democratic incumbent Sen. Jon Tester, who had served three terms in office.
Sheehy’s campaign received significant financial backing from wealthy donors. Among them was Stephen Schwarzman, chief executive of the private equity firm Blackstone. Schwarzman contributed $8 million to a super PAC supporting Sheehy’s campaign. Prior to the campaign, Schwarzman had also invested $150 million in Sheehy’s firefighting business.
According to the Times report, Schwarzman “was not the only financial heavyweight in Mr. Sheehy’s corner.”
The analysis found that at least 64 billionaires and 37 members of their immediate families donated directly to Sheehy’s campaign. When contributions routed through political committees were included, billionaires supplied about $47 million in support of the campaign that ultimately helped Sheehy win the race.
Several well known conservative donors also supported the Montana effort. These included Jeff Yass, founder of the trading firm Susquehanna International Group, as well as members of the Uihlein family, owners of the shipping company Uline. Hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin was another major political donor connected to the network of wealthy contributors backing conservative candidates.
Griffin has also been active in ballot measure campaigns. In Florida, he spent $12 million opposing an initiative that sought to legalize marijuana.
The Times analysis reported that Sheehy’s election gave wealthy donors an ally in Washington. The senator became “a key ally on tax policies that benefit the wealthy” and “cosponsored a proposal to eliminate the estate tax.”
Billionaire donations were not evenly distributed across political parties during the 2024 election cycle. While wealthy donors historically support candidates in both parties, the Times found that billionaire giving shifted strongly toward Republicans. For every one dollar donated to Democratic candidates, five dollars went to Republicans.
Former President Donald Trump was the largest beneficiary of billionaire campaign contributions. A study by Americans for Tax Fairness found that by October 2024 Trump had already received $450 million from 150 billionaire families.
Those donations represented 75 percent of the $600 million that billionaire families had contributed to major candidates by that point in the election cycle. Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris had received $143 million from billionaire donors during the same period.
By the end of the campaign, several individual billionaires had given enormous sums to Trump and political committees supporting him. According to OpenSecrets, Tesla and SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk contributed more than $250 million. Pro-Israel mega-donor Miriam Adelson and banking heir Timothy Mellon each donated more than $100 million to Trump aligned political groups.
Following his return to office, Trump appointed more than a dozen billionaires to positions within his administration. Musk was tasked with cutting public spending as the de facto head of the so called Department of Government Efficiency.
The influence of wealthy donors has also expanded far beyond federal elections. According to the Times analysis, billionaire political spending increasingly targets state and local races.
The report stated that “Many of those billionaires are not only hoping to reshape the federal government… but to win influence in state legislatures, city councils, school boards, and courthouses.”
It also noted that “Ultra-wealthy donors… have helped overhaul political leadership and policy in states across the country, expanding private charter schools, restricting abortion rights, advancing artificial intelligence in government, and blocking laws that would make it harder to evict tenants.”
The trend toward large scale billionaire spending is expected to continue as the next election cycle approaches. Political groups connected to the artificial intelligence industry, the cryptocurrency sector, pro-Israel lobbying organizations, and Trump’s super PAC have already assembled large financial reserves for the upcoming 2026 midterm elections.
Billionaires have also engaged in major policy fights at the state level. Silicon Valley figures including PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and Google co-founder Sergey Brin have contributed to efforts opposing a proposed California ballot initiative that would impose a one time 5 percent tax on billionaires.
Supporters of the tax say the measure would replace funding for Medicaid that was cut after Republicans passed a large federal budget law the previous year. Wealthy opponents of the measure have collectively spent tens of millions of dollars attempting to defeat it.
The scale of billionaire political spending has grown rapidly over the past decade and a half. In the 2008 election cycle, billionaires spent about $16.6 million attempting to influence federal elections. By 2024 that figure had increased to $3 billion, representing a more than 12,000 percent rise when adjusted for inflation.
Campaign finance experts link this dramatic growth to the 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which allowed corporations and outside groups to spend unlimited sums on political advocacy supporting candidates.
Daniel Weiner, director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s elections and government program, described the rise in billionaire campaign spending as an “astonishing stat.”
Writing about the broader implications of the trend, Weiner said, “The resulting collapse of campaign finance rules has combined with a resurgence in the sort of high-level self-dealing that was pervasive during the Gilded Age, when bribery and graft were common, and corporations used their wealth to secure monopolies, government subsidies, and other benefits.”
“For a representative democracy like ours to work, citizens must have some confidence that, through voting and other forms of political engagement, they have a fighting chance to turn their priorities into government policy,” he concluded. “Far too many Americans have lost that faith, and they identify pervasive corruption at the top of our government as a big part of the reason. But cycles of corruption followed by reform are an enduring feature of American history. A new round of ambitious reform is overdue.”
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